Stop & Shop Strike Support

31,000 workers at Stop & Shops across Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are on strike.

Management at Stop & Shop presented their “final offer” to their workers, which included significant cuts to healthcare, massive increases (over 100% in some cases) to workers’ health care premiums, and replacing wage increases with so-called bonuses. All in all, this represents a massive step backwards with many workers facing reduced weekly earnings if they agreed to their “final offer”.

On top of this, Stop & Shop’s parent company reported over $2 billion in profits last year. This is not the time to ask for concessions. Rather, this is a time to invest in the workers who have made Stop & Shop so successful and profitable.

Here are four ways you can help UFCW workers win a fair contract:

1. Sign UFCW's petition to Stop & Shop.Click here to sign the petition to Stop & Shop management to let them know you stand with the workers as they fight for a fair contract.

2. Join the workers on a picket line.The workers need your help and solidarity as they picket at over 90 stores across CT. Join them whenever you have time and bring them coffee and doughnuts. See below for a list of Western CT Area Labor Federation “adopted” store locations. Chapter leaders will have posters & updated "Solidarity Bucks" on hand, but we encourage you to show up with your union posters, wearing your union clothing, and any prepared chants you have.

On Feb. 15, just days after massive layoffs at Activision Blizzard, the AFL-CIO issued a powerful public statement of support to game developers in the United States. Its message, published in an open letter at Kotaku, was both simple and profound.

There was plenty of punditry plastered across cable news last week. But, as the dust settles, there is one story that has come to define this election: working people standing together to make a difference. The labor movement unleashed an unprecedented political program this year. Across the country, union members made the difference, fighting for our issues, for union candidates and for our proven allies.

Organized labor’s record voter mobilization efforts this year, which started earlier than ever before for a mid-term election, emphasized pocketbook issues and – says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka – will produce huge “momentum at the ballot box” on Nov. 6.

It also produced a record number of unionists running for everything from city council and county commissioner to Congress and governor, Trumka and Julie Greene, the federation’s mobilizing – and politics – director said in an Oct. 30 telephone press conference.

The president is the billionaire head of a global business empire, and his mostly millionaire Cabinet may be the richest in American history. His opponent in the 2016 election was a millionaire. Most Supreme Court Justices are millionaires. Most members of Congress are millionaires (and probably have been for several years).

For the people of Flint, justice may come from a courtroom, but change comes at the ballot box.

November 6 is Election Day.

In 2010 and 2014, as families in Flint went to the voting booth, little did they know that their decisions would impact something as fundamental as the water they drink. However, policies put in place by the state and local officials elected on those days put saving money ahead of the health and water quality of Flint residents.

It seems every talking head in Washington has been in a frenzy recently, rushing to either glorify or condemn the new North American Free Trade Agreement, known as the United States Mexico Canada Agreement. But the truth is that it is still too early to pass any final judgment.

Labor has always held electoral power, especially when wielded by women. Former Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins’s lifelong dedication to workers’ rights was sparked by witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, in which 146 people — predominantly young Jewish immigrant women — died, most as a result of locked factory doors. Though they shunned the ballot box, legendary political radicals like Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn were all labor organizers.